Curating our Lives–New York, NY

During my art history days, I worked with many museum curators. They can take a massive amount of information, be it art, text, or primary documents–and impressively pare it down to one angle, a definite idea. Curators often look at an entire body of work and choose something unique or interesting to convey their collective ideas about an artist, a time, or a place. I saw the perfect example of this a few weeks ago; I had a couple of hours to kill between teaching classes on the Upper East Side, so I popped into the Guggenheim for a viewing of Picasso Black and White. Filtering Picasso’s prolific work through this one lens made for a really interesting exhibition, which unfortunately has now closed. However, I’ve got a new exhibition on my radar: Bill Brandt:Shadow and Light, which opened on Wednesday at MoMA. It is curated by the wonderful Sarah Hermanson Meister, who I once interned for. I’m sure it will be inspiring, so check it out if you can.

If you think about it, we are all the curators of our lives–choosing what to reveal (or not reveal) about ourselves, what to wear, and what to display in our homes. Once you decide how you want to be interpreted by the world, there you have it–our outward “style”. In a perfect world (a world in which I have hours of free time!), I’d set a rotating exhibition schedule in my house, replacing artwork with new, fresh images or rearranging timeless ones in a funky way. Or at least I’d make good on my January resolution to complete a long awaited hall gallery in my “bowling alley”. I’m still working on it (the brick walls have proven challenging to everything but a drill-bit), but I do promise to post a few more ideas about wall displays for all of your gorgeous photographs in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a few snaps from my quick jaunt to the museum, which is always inspirational. Thank you Picasso (and curators everywhere). Happy Friday!